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If a withering joke in BoJack Horseman is anything to go by, it’s a bit of a cliché that at some point young writers try to make a web series/sitcom based on their lives. A lot of these actually do get made and generally speaking they’re pretty awful. The problem with these kind of ‘personal’ stories is that your life is always going to be more interesting to you than anyone else, unless you have a mega unique life which, let’s face it, most of us don’t. I can’t tell you how many shitty trailers I’ve seen for shitty webseries all about being a struggling artist in Melbourne, getting by with a little help from your kooky friends. These shows are generally parodies of themselves which is why I’m half ashamed (but obviously not enough to disguise the fact) to say that last year I wrote my own.

The reason for the lack of shame here is that I actually thought We Are Adults was pretty good, and still do. The other night, after a few beers in Scotland, I had a read over the six episodes and was surprised by how much I liked them. I think some of my best writing is in there, and they actually have something to say that’s more than just ‘look at how funny/self deprecating I am’.

Obviously my take on it comes with a hefty dose of bias, but as I don’t really have any designs of pursuing the series any further, I think I can be reasonably clearheaded about it. At the time of writing my agent felt that it wasn’t unique enough the make it stand out on the Australian market, and I’m inclined to agree. But the realities of its non-existent place in the industry doesn’t take away from the merits of it as a piece of writing.

At its heart, We Are Adults is about the stark divide between who we are and who we believe we should be. This is something that I think is relatable to everyone, but it tends to be an especially strong feeling in your early twenties, when you’re trying to figure yourself out. Specifically, it’s based on a series of events from when I was about 21, the time I was single, working at Draculas, and just starting to dip my toe into writing theatre. It was a messy, sometimes ugly, transformative period in my life and I feel like We Are Adults does a pretty good (if exaggerated) job of capturing it. It’s an intensely personal piece of writing, that I think is also pretty funny.

Because it’s going nowhere and because I want to share it, I’ve decided to chuck the episodes up on my Patreon account for $5+ subscribers. And, to best emulate the feeling of watching a show, I’ll be releasing the scripts weekly. They’re not too long, and I think they’re probably worth a read. So check out the first two episodes if you want and let me know your thoughts.

​When I first started on Movie Maintenance I was a tiny bit naïve. The podcast seemed to come out of nowhere during a particularly miserable year in which I was struggling to see any viable future for my writing, and I agreed to do it because hey, what else was I up to? I had no idea anybody was listening and less idea that anybody would like what we did.

Hearing the early snippets of praise for our work was a bit like a light turning on. Slowly I realised that not only were people enjoying my stuff, but it was quite a few people. The stuff in question might have been essentially pitching fan fiction sequels but at a time when I really needed to feel like I was good at what I did it was hard to care.

The first signs of dissatisfaction were pretty subtle. One or two people wanting more collaborating, less lengthy pitches. Someone thinking I talked too much, someone else wanting more rotation with who was pitching any given week. While, being a bit sensitive, I wasn’t thrilled with this, I saw their point and tried to adjust accordingly. But generally speaking I was too focused on all the positive feedback to pay much heed to the negative.

Then came the double whammy of the Mad Max and Jessica Jones episodes. In both I loudly denigrated hugely popular properties. One was an unplanned live show that I was called up for when I was already drunk, the other was literally recorded the day after I got back from America, when I was grumpy and jetlagged. While I stand by everything I said in those episodes, I wasn’t my best self for either of them and people noticed. For the first time I found myself on the receiving end of more hate than love and that was officially the end of my honeymoon period with Sanspants Radio. After that I either started getting a lot more vitriol or at least started noticing it more. While the good stuff very much outweighed the bad, from then on I was keenly aware of the fact that there was a large contingent of Sanspants listeners who, despite my best efforts really, really didn’t like me, and had no trouble expressing that, whether it be on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook or iTunes.

If you’re reading this, please note that this is neither a pity party or a search for praise. I used to be pretty sensitive to the bad stuff, now it’s generally white noise. It’s never nice to read anyone saying you ruined a show or are ‘everything that is wrong with the internet’, but the truth is that I’m fortunate enough to be paid for appearing on a podcast that has a listenership of more people than I can even imagine. That very simply would not be the case if we weren’t doing something right.

Of course, doing something right for one person does not mean it’s right for the next, and I think one mistake I’ve made with Movie Maintenance is trying to cater to the complainers, compromising what I enjoyed doing to make the show more in line with what I thought people wanted. So we toned down the amount of fan fiction pitches and amped up the fixes of recent, relevant films.

The consequence of that decision? Our downloads went down.

Of course the instinctive reaction to this is to go into damage control, to try and work out what people want from the show and tweak it to fit with that. But then you remember that doing that is what got you into this position in the first place. And then you realise that you enjoyed the show a lot more when you were doing what you wanted to do instead of what some faceless Reddit commenter wanted. Because doing what we want gives us ownership and ownership allows for passion.

Here’s my theory; our passion for Movie Maintenance is what let others be passionate about the show in turn, because it couldn’t help but shine through in everything we did. The problem with passion is that it can divide people. If someone expresses a strong opinion that is contrary to your own, it’s only natural to get defensive. If you’re listening to Movie Maintenance it’s probably a safe assumption that you love film and when you love something it’s never pleasant to hear it ripped to shreds. But in the same way I had to learn that all the hate coming my way was just a few people’s opinions, those who disagree with us need to realise the same. We’re not right about the films we criticise. We’re just expressing an opinion. Often loudly and angrily because hey, that’s how passionate people are. But that doesn’t change the fact that our opinions are no more or less important than anyone else’s.

I tried to tone myself down in response to the critics. I tried to change Movie Maintenance to make it into what I thought they wanted. Because at the end of the day I’m only human and I want to be liked. But conversely one thing I know for sure is that we can only ever be the people we are and trying to be otherwise is a pointless and depressing endeavour.

I’m always going to click on the bad reviews and snarky Reddit threads. I can’t help myself. But I’ve realised that the benefit of this only goes so far. Being able to hear criticism is healthy, but being able to raise an eyebrow at personal attacks is healthier. Because in the end, your only real option is to do what makes you happy. To paraphrase a pertinent song, you can never please everyone so you might as well please yourself and hope that the rest follows.

So in a few short hours my UK trip will be at an end. It’s weird; I feel like it’s gone both mega quickly and slowly, due to having done a hell of a lot in a very limited amount of time.

After leaving Loch Ness we spent another night in Edinburgh, although not doing anything especially interesting (unless you count sinking pints as interesting). Then, the next afternoon, we were off to Ireland. This was part of the trip I was especially excited for; anyone who knows me knows how much I love Irish culture; from music to writing and the rest, so I was really pumped to see the country for the first time. We were staying with some friends of Molly’s, Paula and Jon, who apart from being excellent hosts have also proved to be great company and many hours have been spent talking over a few beers. In fact, I feel like these conversations will probably be one of the things I miss the most about the trip.

Our first full day here was spent in Dublin, doing all of not very much. We wandered around, saw some sights, went to some shops and whiled away an afternoon drinking Guinness in a pub where the singer seemed to have a singular skill for singing songs that we both love (Landslide, Town I Loved So Well, Grace, Fields of Athenry, Take me Home Country Roads) before going and watching Kingsman: The Golden Circle, which I still love despite the critics. The next day we pretty much did the same thing because apparently we’re shit tourists.

On our third day however, we went full tourist and did a bus tour out to Galway and Connemara. The reasoning behind this was twofold; we wanted to see some of the landscape and I really wanted to visit the town of Leenane, which was allegedly one of the stops on the tour. For those who don’t know, Leenane is the setting of Martin McDonagh’s Leenane Trilogy, a series of plays comprising The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara, and The Lonesome West, which together comprise some of my favourite writing of all time. The tour was exciting because I had kind of hoped to visit the town but figured actually doing so from Dublin would be impractical. This trip seemed a good way to do it.

And look, it was definitely worth it, save for one little niggle; we didn’t actually stop in Leenane. We did a boat tour in sight of it, and we shortly after drove through it, but we didn’t get to stop and really see the place the way I’d hoped which, after spending the bus ride reading the three plays in preparation, was pretty disappointing. That said, considering I had thought I wouldn’t get the chance to see the town at all, I can’t really complain, and the Connemara landscape was stunning regardless.

Today we went for a walk up on the nearby cliffs with Paula and Jon, then after lunch Molly and I headed to a highly recommended pub around the corner, where I am currently typing this. Shortly we have to head back to pack the last of our stuff, then it’s off to the airport and back to Australia.

The end of any trip is always a bit weird; on the one hand I don’t really want to return to real life, on the other, I’m definitely ready to get back to work, and with Moonlite, The Commune and Seasons of Fear waiting back home I’ve got no shortage of things to be getting on with. But the trip has just been so bloody good; I visited places I’ve always wanted to go to, I saw Nessie (shut up, I did), I met some wonderful people and spent some time with my pretty alright girlfriend, who still doesn’t seem to hate me at the end of this.

Arriving at Loch Ness was weird. I think when there are places we always dream of going we can build them up in our heads, so much so that when we finally do go they can only ever be anticlimactic. This was how I felt about going to Rome and Venice years ago; while there was a lot I loved about those places, they could never quite match up to the magic in my head.

I’m not really sure why Loch Ness was different. Maybe it was because I hadn’t been building it up in my head; I knew I was going and that I was excited, but I wasn’t spending every day feverishly anticipating it. So when the water first came into view and Molly told me that was it, I think the emotion surprised me. There was no build up or over intellectualising, just the sudden realisation that I was really here at the place I read about and obsessed over so much as a kid. I could barely keep the grin from my face.

It’s weird to think we’re leaving tomorrow. This was meant to be the long, lazy part of the trip, spent languidly Nessie hunting and writing in pubs. And yeah, there was a fair amount of both, but probably not the endless hours I’d anticipated. Five days in a part of the world as beautiful as this isn’t much and the fact is you want to see whatever you can while you’re here.

We spent our first night here having dinner in a small pub two doors up from our cottage, before settling in to watch Loch Ness at Loch Ness. The next day was fairly lazy; I did some writing, Molly did some drawing, we ate some food and that was about it. The next morning we went out on the Loch; the views were spectacular but I won’t lie, my eyes were predominantly glued to the water. After that we went to a Nessie exhibition, which was interesting if way too sceptical for my taste. Luckily, about a hundred metres down the road from there was a second Nessie exhibition, which was far tackier and way more determined to convince you there was a monster, which suited my tastes just fine.

On the third day we went to check out the beautiful national park of Glen Affric, and on the fourth day we went and looked at Urquhart Castle before heading up to Fort Augusta and having a horrible meal in a bizzare little restaurant right on the Loch where the two staff members pointedly avoided catching your eye when you wanted to order, didn’t seem to talk, and served burgers that contained nothing but a single dry broken in half patty. Each afternoon I headed to a pub around the corner (the closer one wore out its welcome due to high drink prices and a suspicious tendency to shut half an hour after I arrived, no matter how early it was) before coming home for dinner and lazy movie watching. In general the days unfolded with plenty to occupy us but lots of pleasant downtime as well, which was pretty much perfect.

The plan for today was to head out to the Isle of Skye, which was a reasonable drive. We left fairly early in the morning and as we rounded the bend near Urquhart Castle I saw something in the water. At first I thought it was a wave or the trail from a boat or something, but there was no boat in sight. It was long and grey, just slightly under the surface, moving deeper into the Loch before it submerged. It took me a few seconds to process it and when I did any attempt at reason flew out the window.

The weird thing that I hadn’t really said out loud was that, as we first arrived at the Loch I had this feeling that I was going to see something. It wasn’t much beyond that; I wouldn’t even go as far as to say it was a hope. Just this… sense, I guess. And then, this morning, there it was.

Of course, what ‘it’ was is the question here, and maybe there is a reasonable explanation. Maybe I imagined it or something. But I don’t think I did. And I’m not going to invite more scorn by putting my foot down and swearing blind I saw the monster, because I honestly don’t know what I saw; it was there for a few seconds and gone before I got a good look at it. But I saw something.

And hey, something is enough for me because it’s a damn sight more than nothing. And since I didn’t get a longer look and since there’s no way to reliably quantify it, you can probably guess what I’m gonna choose to believe I saw.

​Writing a story is often a bit like a relationship. Especially when the project is a big one you find yourself at a bit of a loss when it ends. You might read over it again and again, find any excuse to look at your favourite passages or moments you’re especially proud of in what essentially amounts to drunk dialling your ex. You might decide it isn’t over and try to come up with a sequel, prequel or addendum that you hadn’t previously planned for. Or you might forcibly decide to move on by rebounding with a new story that isn’t ready to be written yet. But, like the end of a relationship, the end of a story is something that it takes time to come to terms with, even if you spend that time wishing you could either go back to before or else speed up this odd grieving process.

I’m kind of in that weird stage at the moment. As I’ve written a lot about recently, I’ve spent the last year buried in a new re-write of Windmills, which I think is probably the best the story has ever been or will ever be. Consequently this means that finishing this novel wasn’t just the end of another major project, but rather the end of an ongoing process that started in 2009. And so trying to work out what to do next has been tricky.

I’ve got no shortage of ideas. I want to adapt Heroes into a novel and Sunburnt Country into a screenplay. I was to write a Boone Shepard play. I have a bunch of film screenplay ideas; a coming of age drama, a quirky university set romantic comedy and, as of today, a family film about the discovery of the Loch Ness Monster. Every one of these pursuits could represent something new and exciting for me; every one could be the next thing that electrifies my imagination and becomes a lasting obsession. And yet I’m finding it hard to invest in any of them because I still have the lingering taste of Windmills. I’m still thinking about that world and those characters and consequently I’m finding my time in Scotland characterised by an inability to knuckle down and work on one new project, which is something I really wanted to do while here.

Molly and I spoke about this the other day, about feeling like a place should be inspiring you and getting your creativity going. I think Scotland is having that effect; I’ve come up with at least five new stories ideas while here, but making myself sit down and actually write is proving to be the problem, thanks to that nasty little Windmills hangover. That’s the main reason that I’m sitting in a Loch Ness pub right now bemoaning this feeling in text instead of working on something new.

But then I guess that old bit of advice for writing is to apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair and just do it; if I sit around waiting for something to capture my mind the same way Windmills did then I’m probably going to be waiting a long time. So, capitalising on something that has been on my mind a fair bit recently, I think I’m going to take a run at that Heroes novel and see what happens. Otherwise I’ll be back to the blog before long.

After a busy final day in London ping-ponging between various friends who all happened to be in the country at the same time as me, I arrived at Kings Cross reasonably early on Sunday and hung around checking out the tacky tourist trap that is the Platform 9 ¾ shop (I was totally a tacky tourist), ate the worst bacon sandwich ever, begrudgingly paid money to use a toilet, and then settled in for a four hour train ride that went by in a flash, due to the combination of lovely views and the fact that you can buy beer on English trains.

After meeting up with Molly on Sunday night, we spent yesterday walking around Edinburgh itself. Edinburgh Castle was fascinating; a labyrinthine, seemingly endless expanse of history that had something new to explore around every corner. We had lunch in a little nearby pub that served potentially the best soup I’ve ever had (I immediately ordered a second bowl) then explored the city from top to bottom. I’m not sure there’s much to be gained from writing about how beautiful a city famous for being beautiful is, but in the interests of clarifying my personal stance on the place, Edinburgh is beautiful.

Except, that is, for the charmer known as the ‘Museum of Childhood’. We were on our way back to the bus when we passed it and, somewhat curious and tempted by the ‘free entry’ sign, we went to check it out. A five-storey collection of old toys and games, it starts out quaint and charming enough then as you ascend the levels you descend into what feels like a bit of a nightmare. The exhibits get creepier and more sparsely occupied by tourists as you go, until the final level was empty except for many dead eyed, blank faced, oddly positioned mannequins and a looped recording of children singing. Beating a swift retreat was hardly comforting, as you still have to pass all the glassy eyed dolls and warped approximations of classic children’s characters, like a Puss in Boots that looked a) nothing like a cat and b) likely to sink its lopsided teeth into your jugular at any second. There was also a literal animal bone wearing a dress.

That night we headed into Glasgow to meet some Sanspants fans. After the fun I had doing the same thing in London I decided to throw out a last minute tweet seeing if anybody wanted to catch up for drinks and, to my enduring surprise, people did. It was another awesome night; we met some great people, had some fantastic chats, and I did not pay for a single beverage, although I was paying a little bit this morning. Hangovers aside, we left Edinburgh early and matched the passing landscape with listening to S-Town; I know I’m late to the party on this one, but it’s fascinating stuff, even if I can’t help but feel it’s somewhat exploitative in how it approaches the lives of the real people its storytelling is based around. But hey, I’m still hooked so I guess I can’t be that morally troubled by it.

Outside of Inverness we stopped at the Culloden Battlefield. I knew nothing about this particular part of Scottish history (I don’t know much about Scottish history that isn’t plesiosaur related) so learning about what happened in the visitor centre before heading to the site of the battle itself was an extremely interesting, if sobering experience. Coupled with grey and grim weather the desolate expanse of the battlefield felt especially bleak.

But, and I should probably have seen this coming, the best part of the last couple of days was catching the first sight of Loch Ness. I honestly didn’t think it would have an enormous effect on me; seeing places you’ve always wanted to go is rarely as amazing as you build it up to be in your head and I assumed the Loch would be the same. But seeing those waters for the first time, framed by sheer green hills and a light mist under a grey sky, got my heart racing and a lump in my throat. I’ve always been so in love with the mystery of the place, with the idea that there is something in this beautiful, remote part of the world that we can never fully comprehend or explain. I’ve loved the story of the monster since I was old enough to love anything, I’ve read books and watched documentaries on it, and being here for the first time is so, so exciting.

Because, maybe absurdly, part of me really believes that I just might see something out there. And I’ve got the next few days here to do it in.

​Today is my last full day in London, although putting it like that makes it sound like a bigger deal than it is considering today is also only my third day in London. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind trip; I pretty much only just touched down and now I’m off again, heading to Scotland to meet the lady and make my fame and fortune when I inevitably find Nessie.

The last few days have been a bit strange, from leaving Melbourne to now. My flight was at 6am, so I decided to stay awake overnight before catching a (very) early morning Uber. This was probably the right decision but it did mean that upon arrival at the airport I was very tired and very grumpy. When I finally got on the plane I was stoked to see that I had a row to myself, and so pretty much immediately upon taking to the air I stretched out, put a blanket over myself, put on my eye cover thing and fell asleep only to be woken up five minutes later by a flight attendant roughly poking me to ask if I wanted a juice.

I was fucking mad.

Then, of course, I couldn’t get back to sleep properly and so the fourteen hour flight to Dubai passed in a weird twilight zone of drifting off, waking up, trying to watch a movie, drifting off again, repeat ad nauseum for what felt like an eternity. I was relieved to arrive in Dubai just to get a break from the vicious cycle, at least until I realised that Dubai was very much its own special class of nightmare. Signs that seemed designed to confuse you by directing you every way but the one you’re supposed to go, heat that was just that tiny bit too much, people everywhere, uniformed blokes standing guard outside the bathroom to welcome you and aggressively direct you into cubicles (I was so weirded out by this that I walked out and refused to go until I was on the plane despite the man yelling for me to come back); the feeling of going in increasingly frustrating circles was exacerbated as I found myself desperate to be back on a plane. Which, of course, was then another seven hours of trying and failing to sleep.

But everything clicked into place upon arrival. I spent my first morning in London trying to find my way from where I’m staying to the Thames; despite being told it was only a ten-minute walk I wandered around hopelessly lost for two hours until I arrived back where I had started and subsequently realised that it was only a ten minute walk, just in the opposite direction to the one I had set out in. Usually this would annoy me to no end, but I sort of just met it with a shrug before keeping on my way. This is one of the first times I’ve been travelling without a packed schedule, and I’ve absolutely loved the fact that I can just wander for hours on end, seeing the sights, experiencing the city, thinking my thoughts. It’s been so relaxing to just sort of dawdle from place to place, aimlessly killing time by exploring all the strange little alleys I stumble upon.

On Wednesday night I had a meeting with a producer followed by an animation networking event, which was really cool and resulted in my meeting some great people before jetlag made me look like that rude bastard yawning through speeches. I spent Thursday wondering again, stopping in at the occasional bar or café to do some writing before setting out again to just bounce around the place. Then last night I met up with a bunch of Sanspants fans at a London pub and had a fantastic time; we downed pints and chatted until the bar kicked everyone out. I always love getting to meet people who like the show and hanging out with them is always excellent.

So today I’m catching up with a few friends who also happen to be in London, then tomorrow morning I’m getting on a train and heading off for the next part of this trip. I’m pretty excited to see what Scotland holds, which I assume to be a certain plesiosaur in a certain loch that I will befriend and consider revealing to the world before realising that some mysteries are best left unsolved, but honestly I’ll be happy if I just keep having as much of a good time as I’m having here. It’s all been just a bit brilliant so far.